NEW YORK — US Supreme Court lifted a federal district court order that kept
humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from
four countries of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The court has also allowed the Trump administration to
revoke temporary legal status for about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another
case, Xinhua news agency reported.
The move has cleared the way for the Trump administration
to strip temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants
for now, and pushed the total number of people who could be exposed to
deportation to nearly one million, local media reported Friday.
To address the growing number of migrants arriving at the
US-Mexico border, the Biden administration created a parole program for Cubans,
Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in late 2022 and early 2023, authorising
them to work in the United States for two years after going through certain
process. The program protected roughly 532,000 people from the risk of
deportation.
But soon after beginning his second term, President
Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Homeland Security
Secretary Kristi Noem to terminate all parole programs. Acting on the executive
order, Noem in March announced ending the parole program, with any grants of
parole still in effect expiring by April 24.
A federal district court judge in Massachusetts agreed to
halt Noem's blanket revocation of migrants' temporary legal status when a group
of 23 individuals including several parolees and a nonprofit organization
challenged Noem's termination of the program.
The Trump administration first appealed to the US Court
of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, which declined to pause the district court's
order pending appeal; and then sought the Supreme Court's intervention.
